Terry Marotta: Free entertainment

Monday

Oct 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2012 at 5:33 PM

A trip to the mall cheers me up every time. I smile just looking at the life-size posters of all those sulky-looking models, all starved into skeletons. “Better you than me, girls!” I always think, on walking past them.

Terry Marotta

A trip to the mall cheers me up every time. I smile just looking at the life-size posters of all those sulky-looking models, all starved into skeletons. “Better you than me, girls!” I always think, on walking past them.

But if seeing fashion posters at the mall is fun, seeing the people there is more fun, because let’s admit it: people-watching is what you go to a mall to do.

The mall is the village square of modern life, the place where you’re actually encouraged to loiter, on the chance that you’ll suddenly be overtaken by the urge to approach one of these little kiosks and actually buy those smokeless cigarettes, that mane of fake hair; those fuzzy-slippers fashioned to look like giant bear paws.

And then there are the human interactions on display at the mall.

Below, a scene I just witnessed at ‘my’ mall, the meaning of which I have been trying to plumb ever since.

It took place at the Nightie-and-PJs counter of department store and revolved around an endlessly patient clerk, an out-of-sorts elderly customer and the customer’s friend, who stood four feet behind her and functioned as kind of Greek chorus to all the action.

The out-of-sorts customer, in her high 80s as her friend later told me, was giving the clerk a hard time about the coupons she had dug from her bag, which were turning out not to be valid.

“Do you believe this?” she shouted at no one in particular.

“Here she goes again with the coupon tantrum!” her friend said out of the side of her mouth.

I didn’t know if she was talking to me or not but I answered her anyway.

“The coupons are the wrong ones? Or they’ve expired?” I asked.

But the words had hardly left my mouth before the customer at the counter started in again.

“You people MAIL me these things, I make plans to come IN here with them and now you tell me they’re no good!”

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience,” said the clerk, kindly, neutrally.

“InCOMpetence I call it!” crowed the customer.

Then she turned to her friend beside me:

“It happens to me every time!” she shouted before turning back to the clerk.

“She thinks everything just ‘happens’ to her,” her muttered to me. “She never sees what part she might have in how things turn out.”

Nervous now about seeming to talk behind the back of the out-of-sorts customer, I stepped up to the counter myself.

With her shoulders held high, still in a huff, she shot a quick look over at me.

“I hate to sound so worked up,” she said.

Afraid of saying the wrong thing and setting her off again, I replied, “I bet you don’t sound this way very often.”

“Let’s go EAT!” boomed her friend, in the voice of a nursery teacher selling the idea of naptime to her little charges, and they began moving off.

“You ladies have a nice afternoon,” called the sales associate after them, before turning to me with a perfectly pleasant and neutral expression.

She didn’t roll her eyes. She didn’t grimace. She didn’t shake her head even slightly to shake of negative feelings. She only greeted me pleasantly, as if the world was made new with every new person she met.

Which it is, come to think of it. Which it in fact is.

Write Terry either at terrymarotta@verizon.net or c/o Ravenscroft Press, PO Box 270 Winchester MA 01890. Have a peek next week at her blog Exit Only for pictures of this mall day, at www.terrymarotta.wordpress.com.

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